It is because of Wikipedia that I even have an account on this site.
Some months ago, I had been editing Wikipedia, on non-controversial subject matter mostly related to television. I also enjoyed browsing it, and I still do on occasion.
I appreciate the intentions behind both its creation and its administration. People are working to try to provide a free encyclopedia, and that deserves praise.
However, it is constructed in a way that it is very hard to bring about an accurate view of a politician who is liked by the MSM, or really even any politician.
In browsing Wikipedia, I happened on one day, to wonder what was said about Joe Lieberman.
While I'm no extreme left-winger, I could see very clearly how Holy Joe was a cancer on the body of the Democratic party. I was hoping to see an article that fairly presented both points of view.
Instead what I saw was an article that portrayed him as a mainstream Democratic senator who was somewhat controversial for supporting the Iraq war (and for no other reasons).
I thought to myself, "If this were the first I read about him, I'd like the guy and wonder why he was even opposed."
While I now see the futility of the Iraq war, I was for it before I was against it. I might have been persuaded to oppose it from the start had the case been made to me that it would interfere with breaking up al Qaeda, but anyway, that's a tangent.
I don't have the disdain some here have for hawkish Democrats in general.
So, I figured the article needed editing to present the ways in which Joe had shown pro-Bush and anti-Democratic tendencies, by way of balance.
After some fighting, I reached a point where I was satisfied with the article. Some other Lamont supporters added even more negatives to the article, some of which I even felt the need to remove due to lack of sources or add the counterargument to, for balance.
Still, at that point, a fair person might have said it was unbalanced against Joe. I just wasn't going to do the work of finding pro-Lieberman material to add.
A user who went by LionO did that, however. And had he stopped there, that would have been fine. However, he removed all information that might portray Lieberman in a light that even a liberal Democrat might not like, including some unsourced material, but also including well-sourced material.
I fought for a number of days, but he was so persistent that he won the tug of war, although after I did manage to force some degree of compromise.
One reason I gave up was that an informal mediator said it was acceptable for LionO to use misleading but verifiable information, such as statements by Joe as Al Gore's running mate-- when, like any running mate, he was expected to talk up the platform, one that was basically Gore's (in other words, a real Democrat's).
So, for a month or so, Lieberman's page looked at best like a page Joe's friend David Gergen would have written, maybe worse as in a page his own press secretary would have written.
Fortunately, Stephen Colbert (coincidentally or not) somewhat rescued the page by parodying Wikipedia the same day he had Ned Lamont on. That led to more Lamont supporters checking out Wikipedia, and LionO faced edit wars.
Last I checked, LionO was gone as I had been before, and the page was in reasonably balanced condition.
The thing is, for months the page was tilted one way or the other. It probably was never fully fair and balanced, and yet I'd bet a significant number of people got their main impression of Joe from that page.
I'm sure many political pages are similar, especially with the relatively new "Biographies of Living Persons" rule, that intentionally tilts pages to a favorable view of the subject-- which in politics, is an awful idea. And more importantly, it accepts a very limited range of sources for negative information in BLP (not only just MSM, but not even blogs by MSM figures hosted on MSM sites, such as George Stephanopolous' on ABC).
While this is well-intentioned as well, in protection from libel suits as well as that someone who isn't powerful-- like, say, a scientist-- shouldn't have to worry that his Wikipedia entry will include details of his divorce or something.
However, politicians should not be shielded in such a manner.
I saw a remark today that Colbert had "failed." If his satire was meant to cause such massive long-term vandalism as to shut Wikipedia down, then he'd have failed.
That would have been a bad goal, and I'm certain that wasn't his goal. He did disrupt the Wikipedia site greatly for a week or two, and drew people's attention to its failings.
Intentionally or not, he helped cause much more balance in the Loserman articles, and maybe others.
I see a lot of good to Wikipedia. It's a fine source for non-controversial topics, and the best source available for a lot of pop culture items; it can be fun to browse; and it's free.
Anything political, religious, or otherwise controversial that is listed must be read with caution, however.